In recent years, the use of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) in development of light fixtures for various common lighting purposes has increased, and this trend has accelerated as advances have been made in the field. Indeed, lighting applications which previously had typically been served by fixtures using what are known as high-intensity discharge (HID) lamps are now being served by LED light fixtures. Such lighting applications include, among a good many others, so-called canopy lights for gasoline stations and the like, soffit-mounted light fixtures, surface-mounted light fixtures, and a variety of factory lighting and commercial building lighting.
LED light fixtures present particularly challenging problems which relate to size and configuration, ease of installation, servicing and configurational efficiency. Achieving improvements in such charachteristics while also delivering excellent heat dissipation from light fixture components can be problematic. It is desired to achieve compactness in LED light fixtures, ease of installation and ease of servicing while still allowing excellent light output and operational efficiency.
Always a major consideration in the development of LED light fixtures for various high-volume applications is controlling product cost even while delivering improved light-fixture performance. Finding ways to significantly improve LED light-fixture characteristics, use and performance without increase in cost of manufacturing would be much desired.